The long rumored Google Nexus 7 tablet went official this week. AllThingsD reports that developing the tablet was no easy task according to ASUS chairman Jonney Shih. The first big challenge was the timeframe; Google reportedly only gave ASUS four months to build the tablet.

Couple that short timeframe with the fact that tablet had to sell for right at $200 along with the demands of building something from massive company like Google and you can see why this was a tall order for ASUS. “Our engineers told me it is like torture,” Shih said in an interview on Wednesday, shortly after the Google-ASUS joint project was announced. “They [Google] ask a lot.”

“I don’t think there would have been any other partner that could move that fast.,” Andy Rubin told AllThingsD. “We went from zero to working product in four months.”

Rubin talked about the lackluster sales of Android tablets overall saying that the missing piece to the puzzle of why Android tablets weren't selling well initially was that they lacked an ecosystem. He says that Google lacked a full complement of TV shows, movies for purchase, magazines, and other content the people expected on the tablet. “I think that was the missing piece,” Rubin said.

Shih and Rubin believe that the Nexus 7 can serve as a full-fledged tablet computer while being able to compete with the Kindle Fire on price. The tablet has a laminated display, a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor, and a seven-inch IPS unit with a 1280 x 800 resolution. Google will offer the Nexus 7 in 8 GB or 16 GB versions and both have a 1.2-megapixel front camera, accelerometers, GPS, Bluetooth, and integrated Wi-Fi.

In short, the tablet offers significantly more features than the Kindle Fire for the same price. It's also worth noting that Ruben says the tablet is sold at cost.

“When it gets sold through the Play store, there’s no margin,” Rubin said. “It just basically gets (sold) through.”